Volunteer streamkeepers completed our winter/spring bug count on Byrne Creek in SE Burnaby, and the results are Poor to Marginal as per The Streamkeeper’s Handbook methodology.

Unfortunately, this is par for the course. In over a decade of sampling on this urban creek, we’ve rarely seen an Acceptable sample, much less a Good one.

We get very few aquatic invertebrate species in our samples, and the ones that we do net are tiny.

The only way to improve these results is to get more road wash intercepted into rain gardens, swales, and biofiltration ponds. It’s this constant non-point-source wash of pollutants into storm drains that continuously impacts the water quality in the creek.